Saturday, 20 July 2019

EVERYTHING in life, at least for award winning comedian
Clive Chigubu, has the potential to be a joke.

For example, when medical practitioners told him that he
might not able to walk again because of a recurring spinal illness, his first
thought was how he would never be able to call himself a stand-up comedian if
he could not stand up.

Standing up, and not walking, was the first thing that
popped into a mind that finds humour even in the joyless occasions and
circumstances in life.

“The term stand-up comedy means you have to be standing up
to tell any jokes so already my dreams of being a comedian were almost
shattered,” he told Sunday Life with a laugh.

That he could find humour in such a situation is testament
to Chigubu’s character, the character of a man who laughs in the face of
tragedy and always seems like he has a smile dancing on his lips and a laugh
itching to explode from his chest.

But for a while things last year were not funny for
Chigubu. With a spinal ailment related to meningitis, he had to come to terms
with that he might never be the same again.

“I was told that I would never walk again because I had a
spinal problem resulting from meningitis. So they removed something from my
spine and chances were high that I would never be able to walk again or I would
lose my memory,” he said.

While some might have received such news with trepidation,
for Chigubu the diagnosis changed his whole outlook on life. For one, it made
him lose all the fears that had dogged him when he had his full health.

“I remember that
people were very down at home but I looked at it as a test of faith. I started
to lose all fear and look at life with a brave face. That’s the spirit that I
carry now. My body is small but my spirit is huge. I’m way bigger now and I’m
not even scared,” he said.

The two months he spent bed-ridden after the operation
hospital were also a test of his standing in public as hospital staff made it a
point to give him the best treatment.

“The staff definitely treated me differently. Somehow they
kept on encouraging me because I wanted to rush my recovery. They told me to
take my time. Perhaps because I’m so well known they might have feared to mess
up the operation. But the staff at that hospital were also just amazing. I can
never thank them enough and even now I pop in now and then to thank them for
what they did for me,” he said.

For years Chigubu has been regarded as one of the Bulawayo
arts scene’s wild sons, a carefree young man who could never get accused of
saying no to a bit of fun. However, ever since battling ill health, Chigubu has
found God and his wild days are seemingly over.

“I grew up in a Christian family but this is something that
has grown in me over the last three years . . . I would just say during the
time that I was ill, that was the time that I came closer to God. When people
say you’ll meet God you might think that this is someone you’ll encounter in
human form but that’s not the case. He is just someone that comes and you feel
it within. During the time when you’re down I think that’s when you meet God
and you understand he’s way bigger than you,” he said.

At church, he said, he hoped to find the answers that had
thus far been eluding him in life.

“If you look at us as Zimbabweans, the problems that we
face need some form of spiritual guidance. We’ve got questions but very few
answers so who do we turn to? We turn to God. If you look at these new churches
that are opening they also steal money from the poor. So while you’ll be going
to church with your own problems you also end up getting conned. So how do you
get stronger? You look at the old churches,” he said.

The comedian has chosen one of the country’s more
traditional churches instead of the trendy prosperity congregations frequented
by younger people because at Brethren in Christ he felt he could at least find
a semblance of equality.

“On 1 January I went to Brethren in Christ because I
believe that’s the church that doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor. There are
no front row sits and so I went to church and a pastor called Hlongwane knows
me and when I was there he told the congregation that, ‘today we have Chigubu
in the house of the Lord.’ In church there’s no celebrity, because God is way
bigger that any of us and the gift that I have actually belongs to him. I went
to that kind of church because the more you grow spiritually the more you
realise that whatever gift I have was given to me by a higher power and it’s up
to me to gain an understanding of how to use that gift accordingly. People used
to see a talented Clive but now people will see a talented and hard-working
Clive,” he said.

One of the comedian’s motivations in turning around his
life, he said, was the birth of his daughter in 2017.

After regaining his health and locating his spiritual
compass, Chigubu said the next thing for him was to regain his position at the
top of the food chain in local comedy.

Before his hiatus, he felt that his act had been too stale
and predictable for an audience that loved to be tickled by jokes that are
fresh and new.

“There was a time when I felt I wasn’t putting any more
effort. I started to ask myself why I wasn’t even feeling nervous when I went
on the stage anymore. The Bulawayo audience is beautiful because they love you
at first but soon they show you signs that you should work harder on your craft
because you’ve not yet made it. So I appreciated that and I started to relook
at myself,” he said.

Chigubu, who debuted an episode of his new show called
Bulawayo Broadcasting from the Chambers a few weeks ago, said he wanted to
bring something fresh and new to a comedy scene he felt was now running out of
ideas.

“I want to bring back that theatre feel to comedy.
Comedians these days go on stage and saying ‘this other day I was chilling with
so and so . . .’ and I feel like this is now stale. So how do I bring a
different feel to comedy and at the same time revolutionarise it? So that’s
basically what I have been working on. It’s that and my TV show,” he said.Sunday News